TOUHOU: Land of Shadows
by Jack Mackerel
Summary: Deep in the Zone, Hakurei Reimu and her three friends wake up with no memory of how or why they are there. With only one thought - to kill a man named "Strelok" - they journey through a dangerous land, braving mutants, bandits, and the Zone itself.


This would be Rin Satsuki's last run.

She decided on it after her best friend, a wizened Korean bastard who'd been here since the military blockade went up, suddenly up and left. Just like that. Rin got one sentence out of him when she asked him why.

"Shit's about to hit the fan." That's all he said when he walked out of the bar. A couple of Loners followed him as well, muttering some variation to that sentence. She thought it was just him losing his nerve, probably a bad run-in with a Psuedogiant or Burer, but the next day, a ton of Loners had followed suit. The bar was empty except for a couple of Dutyers, who were making their own plans to bug out. A fifth of vodka later, she decided she'd bug out as well.

She tried to convince herself it was purely a business matter. After all, her courier service – driving an armored SUV to and fro Loner encampments to deliver supplies, weapons, warnings, and the occasional dead drop for Duty and Freedom – would flounder without Loners, and she wasn't going to get caught up in the idiotic faction war between Duty and Freedom. Oh, sure, she was well-paid (at least compared to the average loner) and her business ensured that most bandits stayed away from her, lest they have the Barkeep place a bounty on their head and Duty and Freedom baying for blood.

Deep inside, however, she knew it was a load of shit. When a bunch of Zone vets suddenly leave, that was good enough reason to "get the Hell out of Dodge", as that grizzled Korean said. Whatever "Dodge" was.

Her last run would be to the Newbie Village, which, as the name suggested, was a landing zone for new Stalkers. It was the closest settlement to the edge of the Zone, and the safest spot in all of it. Sure, you still had anomalies and blind dogs and bandits, but compared to the North or even the Zone's center, it was fucking paradise.

She was going to take a gift from the Barkeep to the trader there, a fatass named Sidorovich, and after that, she'd take her shitty little SUV past the Military Cordon, ignore the hoots and catcalls of the privates and corporals and the drunken CO there, and back into the real world. No anomalies, no idiot bandits, no constant hunger, no uneasy sleep tinged with the fear of being ambushed by mutants, no driving through hails of bullets...

Despite all that, she'd actually miss this Hell. Made her feel alive. Rescued her from turning into another no-lifer office lady or otaku or whatever.

Maybe the research institute back in Tokyo would hire her now that she had actual Zone experience. She'd show that beret-bearing bastard boss who rejected her.

As the SUV bounced and rattled over the ruined road, Rin began to pump the brakes. Not because of another Godsforsaken anomaly, those were easy enough for Rin to weave around or even drive through, thanks to the SUV's armor.

The bodies strewn all over the road and a smouldering wreck at the bottom of the slope that dropped to the left of the road was a good enough incentive for her to stop.

It was a Death Truck, or more accurately, a crash site of a Death Truck. Three guesses as to why they were called that. Despite the name, whenever a Death Truck was intercepted, there was always a couple of wounded guys surrounded by piles of corpses. Freedom and Duty often set up roadblocks to intercept them, to get back all their missing men and hope they'd get back at least one man, but they'd wait for hours on end for a truck that would never arrive.

She got out of the SUV, carefully locking it in case it was another idiotic trap from an ignorant bandit to jack her car, and began checking the bodies that looked relatively intact, not bothering with the corpses. She was one of the few, maybe even the only one, in the Zone who viewed robbing from the dead as low, even when it was a way of life here. Besides, even if the bodies had anything worth taking, it'd be scratched to all Hell and would probably get a glare from Sidorovich and maybe fifty rubles.

At the bottom of the slope, she saw four bodies that were different from the mess of military personnel and random SEVA-suited Loners. For starters, they were Asian, just like her – or at least, the two that were lying face up. Their armor obviously wasn't SEVA or the vests made from scraps of metal made by Loners too poor to afford actual armor, and it definitely wasn't Berill or Skat armor. It was too pointed, too aerodynamic and tough-looking to be anything from the Ukrainian military. The armor on her shoulders had been scraped off in the crash, revealing a rather familiar mark...

The first body she had spotted looked... young. Black long hair, in her late teens, not a blemish on her. Her armor, made of a series of interlocking plates of sorts, was red, too bright red (a dumb tactical choice, Rin added) to be a Dutyer, with the occasional lump of white and yellow. She wore a strange helmet, with two lumps rising out of the top. They vaguely reminded Rin of cat's ears. In any case, the girl's chest was rising and falling slowly, so there wasn't a need for a pulse check.

She wasn't sure about the next woman. Her hair was dyed blond, and like the first body, was kept impractically long. Her armor was black, almost like a SWAT member's get-up, but the helmet was triangular and pointed and the armor too thick to be police gear. One hand gripped what was left of a gauss rifle, while the other held a curious octagonal... thing. Must be an artifact, but her Geiger counter didn't say anything. Rin checked for a pulse and got one.

The next body was lying face down. Rin gingerly turned the body on her back, hoping nothing was broken. At least she was breathing, but she was wheezing rather badly, the poor girl. Judging from the remains of her helmet and visor, it looked like her outfit was supposed to be environmentally sealed, like the stuff the Ecologists wore. This one also had long-as-fuck-and-dyed-blue-for-some-reason. Rin wasn't sure if she was Asian or not.

_Last, but not least..._ the last body was blonde like the second girl, but shorter, and somehow more girlish-looking. She was more clearly European than the third girl at least. As usual, her armor was different, but a bunch of wires snaked from damaged plating here and there. It reminded her of the Ukranian exoskeletons, but the armor was too light and completely different. What was left of the girl's helmet was covered in some sort of sensors, reminding her of beady-little spider eyes. _Creepy as fuck, in her opinion._

She didn't notice the dolls until she bent over to get a pulse. Rin nearly emptied her Pernach's magazine into the two figures as they watched. At first glance, they looked like just another stuffed ragdoll or wooden puppet, but then she noticed the scraped away "skin", revealing a mass of circuits, wires, steel skeletons.

"Come on then, let's see how much Sidorovich will pay for the four of you..." Rin whispered to no one in particular.

One by one, she dragged the bodies and their belongings back to her SUV.

* * *

><p>Sidorovich looked up from his greasy meal of fried chicken at the figure heavily stepping down the stairs. It was that Japanese deliverywoman, Rin, the one who was supposed to leave today after his delivery. Instead of his package, however, she was carrying a dead Asian girl, bridal-style, flanked by three rookies carrying in corpses of their own.<p>

"Don't tell me you're leaving for your honeymoon?" The trader chuckled.

Rin rolled her eyes. "These bodies came from a death truck. They have the Mark." Her Ukrainian was heavily accented, but it was passable.

Sidorovich turned away, snorting. "Yeah, you know the drill, strip their armor off, give it to me, and toss them by th-"

"They're alive," Rin cut in. She suppressed a smug smile when the fat bastard wheeled around, bug-eyed in surprise and half a leg of chicken hanging out of his mouth. She wished he had choked on the thing.

"Bullshit! You're lying!"

"Let the Zone take me if I am."

"Put one of 'em here!" Sidorovich began shoving aside the mess of crates and papers on his desk, nearly trashing his plate of food as well. Rin nodded to the rookies she hired to help her move the survivors out of the SUV, motioning to the wall. There was only enough room for one body on Sidorovich's table, after all. Rin dumped the black-haired girl onto it.

Sidorovich looked over the girl, examining the armor and checking the pockets and ammo pouches. Eventually, he stumbled upon a PDA, a model he was unfamiliar with. There weren't even any buttons on the thing. He tapped the screen, and it lit up...

**KILL THE STRELOK. **That was it, those angry letters stamped on a white background.

Sidorovich stared at the cryptic command, then looked over the PDA at Rin. "Well, for these four, I can give you-"

The body jolted, and suddenly, delicate but strong hands snatched the PDA away as if Sidorovich had held the most important thing in the world to her. The body... girl, rather, was still in shock, gasping for breath and staring, horrified, at the ceiling. When her breathing normalized, she was unconscious once more.

That was when Sidorovich noticed the Mark, branded on the exposed arm. It was the same jagged text as every other Mark, but this time, the letters were different...

"Rin, do you know what 'T.O.U.H.O.U." stands for?

"Trespassers, Outsiders, Underminers, Hellraisers, Outcasts, Unknowns." Rin shrugged, not adding she just made that up on the spot.

* * *

><p>Rin didn't bother staying with the survivors, and the newbies went back to the village. Sidorovich gingerly laid the black-haired woman on the ground and waited until one of them gained consciousness.<p>

The black-haired one was the first, starting up with a cough and a dazed glance around the room. She looked at the other bodies, nudging the nearest one, the girl with the pointy helmet, and muttering a name. "Marisa". So, at least they had names and not some stupid callsign for a change. "Marisa" burst into a coughing fit, went through the same motions as the black-haired girl.

Sidorovich didn't understand a lick of Japanese, but he did get a name out of "Marisa" when she went to wake the blue-haired girl. After some poking, she had a much more violent coughing fit as she woke up, digging in her suit's pockets and yanking out an asthma inhaler. Sidorovich got more Japanese, but he did get a name. "Patch" or something like that.

Marisa, relieved, began to bug the short-haired girl. "Alice" was her name, apparently, and she glared at Marisa, who gave her a brilliant smile.

"So, I guess you're all acquainted with each other, huh?" The four turned their heads at Sidorovich, reaching for guns that were no longer there. "Relax. I'm not here to torture you all to death. I'm Sidorovich, I'm a merchant. Do any of you remember anything at all?"

The four were silent for a bit. Sidorovich wasn't sure if they understood a word of Ukranian, but "Patch" spoke up, speaking in overly formal tones. At least her accent was somewhat better than Rin's. "The Ukrainian Zone of Alienation, correct?"

"That's my girl," Sidorovich chuckled. "Tell me, any of you remember anything? Like what you were doing here? Government work?"

"We can't remember shit," Marisa grunted, suddenly grabbing at her helmet as she stood along with the other three. A headache, probably. "All I got is my name, my friends' names, and something about 'killing the Strelok' or whatever."

"Right. Well. So. Marked Ones. I saved you, and I'm not going to pretend I did it to win favors upstairs. You do some jobs for me, we're even, then I set you loose, I don't care why you want to kill this 'Strelok' guy, and it's not any of my business. Now, either I brainwash you like all the newbies topside and tell you what you probably don't know, or I cut the history lessons and give you a mission straight away..."

Sidorovich trailed off as he suddenly noticed how scrunched they were against the wall and staring at him like they had been caged in with a psuedogiant.

"What're you standing there, Stalkers? Come closer... I don't bite."


End file.
